I have found it helpful to remember Eagleman's explanation in "Incognito" that most of my brain is not my conscious mind. Experiments show that decisions are made in the brain and body and one of the last things that happens is the conscious mind gets informed. The CEO in the mind is only microseconds behind but much has been done before that message is sent to the boss.
Eagleman pictures the brain as a political body like Parliament or Congress. When an issue divides the house evenly, the hot potato is tossed to the conscious mind. In the past, much has been made of the rational, logical, supposedly emotion-free mind, the part that reasons clearly. Men especially pick up the idea that they aren't governed by feelings and that emotions are a woman's thing.
I have been a male all my life and I can see that men have emotions. Further, many therapists of various kinds say that one of the best ways to lessen the power of an emotion, say jealousy or rage or love, is to allow oneself to feel the emotion fully, to "sit with it", much as a friend might sit with another friend in the hospital. It seems that quite a bit of evidence supports the notion that attempting to ignore or suppress an emotion generally strengthens its power. It seems to me that movies and real life both show men comforting a woman who has gotten to a tearful state. But, I watch just after that and it seems that the woman is freer to think about the whole issue to a larger extent than the man who says he doesn't feel anything but is clearly still in the emotion's grip.
